Recent Blog Posts
Beware of Checking Your Credit Score Too Many Times
Curiosity can be a wonderful thing when it leads you to spend hours exploring subjects about which you know little on Wikipedia, while others are engaging in more expensive and less wholesome hobbies. While your peers are losing money on sports betting, buying overpriced nutritional supplements based on the recommendations of social media influencers,… Read More »
Credit Insurance Is a Junk Fee Unless You Make an Informed Decision to Buy It
Junk fees are one of the many ways that businesses nickel and dime consumers into paying more than necessary for products and services. They can come in the form of hefty charges that you must pay at the beginning and end of a subscription contract, whether you stop paying for the service when the… Read More »
Dos and Don’ts When Giving Financial Advice to Young People
Listicles serve the ostensible purpose of briefly taking your mind off your problems, but as with so many other kinds of Internet content, your impulse is to click on things that remind you of your current problems, and when you do this, the algorithms reward you handsomely for it. Even though “how to” content… Read More »
Seven-Year Car Loans Are the New Normal
Ten years ago, the standard repayment term for a car loan was five years. People accepted that, if you couldn’t afford the monthly payment on a five-year car loan, you could not afford the car. Seven-year car loans were only for people determined to live beyond their means, or else for cash-strapped folks who… Read More »
Is Disillusionomics Helping You Find Financial Freedom or Keeping You in Debt?
Alice Lassman, a British journalist who studied economics at a time when it was utterly depressing to do so, has described the economic choices of her Generation Z peers as “disillusionomics.” The entrepreneur Demetri Kofinas and the Substack writer Kyla Scanlon have referred to the same phenomenon as economic nihilism. The financial behavior of… Read More »
Can You Trade In Your Car If You Have Negative Equity?
Car loans have always been a common source of financial stress for people who are not so wealthy that they can afford to pay for a car in a lump sum instead of financing it, but if it seems like auto loans are becoming more financially perilous, it is not just your imagination. The… Read More »
Don’t Let Money Dysmorphia Stand in the Way of Your Financial Goals
If you think you are struggling financially, you are probably right. The minuscule balance of your bank account on the last day before your next paycheck arrives tells no lies. Over the past few years, prices have crept higher, so you have to work ever harder to afford the same modest lifestyle. Conversely, if… Read More »
Pennsylvania Law Protects You From Stubborn Auto Renewing Subscriptions, Even When Federal Law Does Not
Federal laws that aim to protect workers or consumers establish a minimum standard. States may enact their own laws that expand on those protections; if they do not, then the federal law will apply in the state. For example, federal law establishes a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Pennsylvania does not have its… Read More »
Your Payday Ritual May Not Get You Out of Debt, but It May Give You Clarity About Your Finances
The people who tell you that the secret to happiness is making a major life change probably stand to gain financially from you making that change. Happiness does not come from nutritional supplements or from quitting your job and moving to Portugal on the advice of a travel blogger. Instead, it comes from celebrating… Read More »
Personal Loans Are Aspirational Now
If you are living paycheck to paycheck these days, you are living the dream. You are in a better financial position than the people who sink deeper into debt with each passing pay period, as they use buy now pay later (BNPL) to buy groceries at the end of the money, and the installments… Read More »
